Friday, July 14, 2006

A lot has happened since my last blog, so I am going to try and recap the past few weeks in a not-so-boring, informative, fun blog!

About 3 weeks ago, I was washing dishes in the kitchen getting ready for our small group to come over. When I looked out of our sink window, I noticed a sign in our front yard. Not just any sign…but a For Sale By Owner sign! I immediately yelled out Zach’s full name to try and figure out if our house was for sale or if it was a joke. It was no joke. Basically, Zach wanted to see what our house would sale for on the market, and he has been somewhat interested in moving into another house in Abilene recently. So I decided to have faith in him and just be the submissive wife. Well, by Tuesday afternoon (40 hours after the sign went up), a couple had put in an offer of what we were asking. This is when the panic hit. They wanted to move in asap, and Zach set the closing date for July 24th. (Conveniently, he is gone on Trek from July 14-22…so that left me packing the house by myself.)Yes, my husband is crazy.Let’s fastforward to the good stuff. While I was gone to New Orleans (which you will hear about soon), the people backed down from the contract. YAY! So we are not moving next week…which is really good because since we don’t have another house, we were going to move in with Zach’s college brother and his 2 roommates. Ugh!There were a couple good things that came out of the whole situation. 1. It inspired Zach to start working around the house on things that have needed attention. 2. I painted our bathroom..finally! Needless to say, it was a crazy week.

We celebrated the 4th of July here in Abilene with our small group. We had a cookout which was delish! Then we went to the Abilene Fireworks Show at Nelson Park. It stunk. The best part was just hanging out with friends and holding little babies.

On the 5th, I left for New Orleans with the graduated Seniors from Highland. They chose to go on a Senior trip to New Orleans to help with whatever needed to be done. The trip needed more sponsors at the last minute, and I jumped on board very quickly! The whole experience was just amazing. All of the kids on the trip were so much fun, and we had a great time of bonding. I don’t know if I can express through words how sad it was to see New Orleans in the state that it is in. It has almost been 1 year (Aug. 29th) since Katrina hit, but the city looks like it happened a couple weeks ago. There are still boats and cars in the median of major highways, most houses have not been touched since the floods, traffic lights in downtown still do not work, they are still finding dead bodies (23 since the beginning of May), areas are still closed off for flood damage purposes…my list could go on. None of us could believe that everything was still so untouched and neglected.

We spent 3 days working so hard to “muck” a 67 year old woman’s home. She lived on her freezer for 3 days before evacuating, and her neighborhood had about 6-8 feet of water standing in it for 1 month before it was piped out. We tore her house down to just the inside frame (which was still covered in mold). There was a lot of mold, HUGE roaches, mice, rats, mold, spiders, and more mold. It felt so good to do something for this woman, but it was so overwhelming because there is so much more to do to even make a dent in rebuilding the city. It’s a sad deal. I would love to talk about it more, so ask me any questions if you have any.

We got back from New Orleans on Monday night, and today (Friday) Zach left for Wilderness Trek with the youth group. He has been so excited about this trip (his brother Tyler and sister Gini are also going), and I am glad that he will get to experience it with some of our huddle kids. While he is gone, my mom is in town to hang out, and then on Monday I am going to Six Flags with Zach’s mom and sisters.

It been really busy, but I love it!

Hopefully some upcoming events include: selling my Santa Fe, trip to Houston to see the Human museum exhibit (and then swing down to Galveston for some Heather time), leading a group at Highland’s High School retreat, and welcoming all my friends that are going to be freshman at ACU this year! Exciting Stuff!